DIY Coat rack shelf

November 8, 2017

In our front doorway we had empty space on the wall and I decided I wanted to put a coat rack there. We don’t really have a coat closet (well, the one we do have is closer to the kitchen and we have plans to convert it into more pantry space). I did a lot of searching for a coat rack that would fit nicely in that space — I wanted something pretty large to fill the space nicely — but I couldn’t find anything that would suit my needs. So we decided to DIY!

The wall space between the OPEN door and staircase is about 4.5 ft so we decided to make the rack 3.5 ft long.

Here are the supplies we used:

1 x 6 board

1 x 4 board

Trim (any style will work)

Rust-oleum chalk paint spray in Linen White

Wood glue

Spackle paste

Sand paper

Electric drill

Two clamps

Coat Hooks (I found a set of 10 from Amazon that worked great. I only used 5)

Screws with anchors

Since we don’t have our own saw at home, we got the wood (the 1 x 6, 1 x 4 and the trim) cut at Home Depot to the size we wanted (3.5 ft). At home, we sanded each of the boards. Then we drilled four holes for the screws where we would attach the 1 x 4 to the 1 x 6. The pre-drilled holes make it easy to screw the two pieces together. Once we had the pieces screwed together (in an L-shape with the 1 x 4 on top of the 1 x 6) we attached the trim underneath the 1 x 4 using wood glue. The wood glue takes a few hours to dry, so we used two clamps to hold it in place while it dried. While it was drying, we used the spackle paste to cover the screw holes. We also spackled the sides of the shelf where all the pieces connected to make it look like one cohesive piece.

After the spackle and the wood glue dried, I sanded everything again to make sure it was all smooth. Then I spray painted the whole piece with Rust-oleum chalk paint. I did two coats of paint.

Once the paint dried, we attached five hooks. We started by putting one in the middle and then evenly spacing out the other four.

Now it’s finished and just needs to be hung! We used four large screws with anchors to attach it to our wall. After it was mounted, I used a little of the paint to cover up the screws so they were less obvious. I could have spackled over them to hide them enough more, but I wanted easy access to the screws for when we decide to take it down.

I absolutely love how it turned out! It’s a perfect little “coat area” for our front entrance. The shelf/ledge is just big enough to set things on. Right now we’ve got it decorated for fall, in a few weeks I’ll decorate it for Christmas! I also found a cute black bench from Home Goods to go underneath it. It’s great for storing shoes under and a nice place for people to sit when they come in.